Stealthy startup Bluebox gets $9.5M to secure a BYOD world

A stealthy security startup called Bluebox has raised $9.5 million from a who’s who of investors, although the world will have to wait a little longer to hear about the technology justifying all that money. If venture capitalist reputations are indicative of big things to come, though, Bluebox must be onto something. Andreessen Horowitz led the round that also included Andy Bechtolsheim (who’s also a board member), Ram Shriram and Brian Cohen.

Here’s what we do know about Bluebox: the company is targeting the security of enterprise data on mobile devices and was co-founded by Caleb Sima and Adam Ely. Sima comes from HP, which acquired SPI Dynamics — the company he co-founded along with investor Cohen — in 2007. Ely was previously CISO at Heroku and security head at TiVO.

“Enterprise security on mobile is an unsolved problem, and, frankly, is in need of innovation. Bluebox is developing a solution that will change the way enterprises think of how to successfully and seamlessly protect their data,” Bechtolsheim, who co-founded Sun Microsystems and Arista Networks, is quoted a saying in the Bluebox press release.

Here’s what else we know: Bluebox isn’t the only hotly anticipated startup with an impressive security pedigree targeting the mobile space. At our Structure conference on Wednesday, Xen creator and former Citrix virtualization CTO Simon Crosby will unveil the the technology behind Bromium, the startup he founded last year along with Xen co-creator Ian Pratt and and former Phoenix Technologies CTO and SVP Guarav Banga. In the meantime, my weekend profile of Crosby gives a few details of Bromium, and the company has a fantastic placeholder website.

Of course, the inherent security issues around bring-your-own-device (BYOD) workplaces have companies of all types worried about securing their data. I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to suggest Bluebox, Bromium and anyone else currently targeting the BYOD movement will have a lot more company in the years to come.